


The Aftermath of Rain

by Bluewolf458



Series: Blair's Life (AU) [2]
Category: The Sentinel
Genre: Gen, Sentinel Bingo
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-30
Updated: 2018-07-30
Packaged: 2019-06-18 16:12:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 720
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15489702
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bluewolf458/pseuds/Bluewolf458
Summary: Naomi and Blair in Scotland, traveling on a bus





	The Aftermath of Rain

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the 2018 sentinel bingo prompt 'scars'
> 
> Not exactly a sequel, this is a follow-up to my earlier story 'A New Direction', and set some five years later.

The Aftermath of Rain

by Bluewolf

Naomi smiled to herself as she registered the surprised look on the several faces that she could see of the other passengers on the bus, an hour into their journey. She had noted the slightly 'Oh, no!' expression on several faces as the passengers already on board watched Blair haul himself up the steps and onto the bus, knowing that they expected a child who appeared to be so young would get bored and start whining before the bus had gone more than a few miles.

But Blair - who was small for his age - was eight, not the five that most of them were probably assuming, and he loved traveling. Even although there had been little to see but sky - or sea, if he peered downwards - on the Transatlantic plane journey, he had, after the first few minutes, mostly ignored the 'view', opened the puzzle book she had bought him from the airport shop, and occupied himself doing the puzzles. Indeed, one of their fellow passengers on the plane had congratulated her on his good behavior as they lined up to leave the plane when they landed at Glasgow.

They took the shuttle bus into Glasgow, where they spent the night. Blair had made just one comment en route - "Mom... they're driving on the wrong side of the road!"

"Some countries do," Naomi replied. "For them, _we_ drive on the wrong side of the road."

"Oh." And she knew he had registered the comment, and would remember it.

***

Next morning they went back to the bus station, found the bus she wanted, and she knew that he would find it easy to entertain himself as the bus left Glasgow behind. It passed, but didn't stop at, the airport, and headed on northwards.

She found the scenery beautiful, and knew that Blair did too.

The bus went up the side of a big lake for about half an hour, stopping once to let two of the passengers leave it, twice to allow someone to board it and once beside some shops in a small town where nobody got on or off except the driver, who took a box into one of the shops. Then it swung away from the lake, heading past the houses of another small town. Blair glanced away from the houses and out of the window on the left hand side of the bus to the hillside opposite.

"Mom - are those little landslides?"

Naomi, who hadn't been paying much attention to the scenery at that point, looked over to the left. Sure enough, the hillside showed the scars of a number of small, but very obvious, landslides that seemed to follow the line of streams.

"I think so," she agreed, and heard him whispering to himself.

"One, two, three... four, five... sixseveneightnine... "

By the time the road took them into an area that was too thick with trees for him to see the hillside, Blair had counted seventy-eight small landslides, all following the line of the tiny streams that ran down the hillsides and mostly fairly high, though there was one place where a bigger one had, at some point in the not-too-distant past, taken rocks and some mud across the road.

"There must have been a lot of rain," Blair said, and Naomi nodded.

"I think you're right."

Finally the bus ran into the small town that was their immediate destination.

 

***

Traveling round the world was, perhaps, an expensive way for Naomi to teach Blair something about history and geography, but she had the money, and knew that if he saw some historical - or, in this area, pre-historical - remains, as well as how people lived in other countries, he would remember it all better than if he just read about it - avid reader through he was. And those serendipitous landslides scarring the hillside had been a way to help Blair with the counting that was the one thing he really wasn't very good at.

One day, she knew, she would have to stop traveling, have to stop teaching Blair herself, settle down for a year or two and send him to a proper school. But for the moment... he was old enough to benefit from seeing places, rather than just reading about them. And that could only be a good thing.


End file.
